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Looking for An Unconventional Marketing Strategy That Works? Top 7 Choices

As site owners and marketers, we’re all looking for that one new, revolutionary digital marketing strategy that works.

From the traditional content creation efforts to social media promotion, many of the strategies we employ just aren’t bringing the same results they did in the past. But all is not lost. You just have to shift your perspective and you’ll get the success you are striving for.

In this article, we’ll let you discover 7 unconventional marketing strategies that have the potential to bring you the results you really want.

So are you ready to change the way you interact with your online audience for a better outcome? Then keep on reading.

This marketing strategy that works is all about encouraging an active partnership between the consumer and the marketing campaign. It basically involves a change of focus: from the brand telling the story, to the story being born out of the conversation between the brand and the audience.

The reason this plan works is that customers are demanding a better online experience. That translates into the buyers wanting the brand to understand them as individuals and create experiences that are unique and personalized for them.

One brand that applies this marketing strategy that works is Amazon. They use their customers’ names in all their materials – from the actual platform to email campaigns. It’s easier to start a conversation when you’re writing “Hi Todd” rather than a generic message that fits all.

They also provide product suggestions based on past purchases. They can even suggest books based on your past reading segments from their marketing materials.

In order to have a great interactive marketing campaign, you need three core elements:

Customer-centric data. This will help you provide real value for each customer in your audience. Without their history of personal purchases, tracking what pages they’ve already seen, and knowing how they use your site, it would be hard to create a tailored experience for them.

A central platform from which to interact with customers. This means you need a good CRM that contains all the data in order to understand each clients’ history with your brand when interacting with them.

A constant presence online. From your social media profiles to even forums and Q&A
platforms, you need to be present everywhere it makes sense for your brand. More importantly, interact with the audience and answer their questions in a timely manner.

What if you started creating the kind of content your audience expected to find when visiting your site? That’s what this marketing strategy that works is meant to help you achieve.

Each time a buyer wants to make an online purchase, they will start looking not just for product options but also the brands behind them. In order to buy from them, the buyer first needs to trust the seller.

Which means the potential customers need to be confident that:

They will be able to contact the business if needed.

The company understands the industry and its latest updates.

The business is active online.

The content on the site addresses their problems.

All this boils down to the right information, the frequency at which the brands communicates, and how easy it is to navigate their sites and marketing channels.

Expectation Marketing is the strategy that will help you have all these included on your site.

The strategy can be easily applied by taking an online course or by ordering the Expectation Marketing ebook in which the co-authors of the strategy explain the principles, case studies and how to apply it for your own company.

We all know that having mobile-optimized content is not a choice but a need for any site nowadays. More than half of the traffic on the internet comes from mobile devices, so your site needs to be ready for those users.

But just adding a responsive design on your site doesn’t cut it anymore. Your marketing content has to factor in the difference in intent the exists between desktop searches and those conducted from a mobile device. Google already takes this into account, which is why it is prioritizing certain results over others for user searching on mobile.

So what does all this mean for you?

It means you should have specific strategies and different approaches for the traffic that comes from desktop compared to that coming from mobile. Take into account that mobile users usually want local results that allow them to take rapid actions.

Create pages that are focused on ranking higher for mobile searches to make the most out of the traffic you gain. Especially if you have a physical business, the mobile-first approach is the one that will best support your marketing efforts.

It will suggest your site and physical shop in those so-called ‘Micro-Moments’. Meaning when someone is in your neighborhood and they are searching for a place to eat, your restaurant site will come up in their Google search on the phone.

There are products, apps, services being created each day. What most companies do once they’ve created their new product is to announce it to the world and make sure everyone has heard about it, multiple times if possible.

The reason ‘Less is More’ is a marketing strategy that works is because it lets you focus on each piece of content individually. Meaning you can create in-depth referenceable materials rather than lots of smaller salesy content.

The core characteristics of this strategy include:

Content knowledge and expertise

Referenceable insights

Long-form content

Comprehensive content including curation

Original content (from research to case studies)

Updating and repromoting successful content.

When I’m mentioning long-form content, I’m thinking of landing pages or blog articles that are 1000-3000 words long. They are usually the ones that rank higher because people spent a lot of time on the page to read the whole content.

Comprehensive content including curation refers to those piece on the Internet where the author takes several relevant pieces from social media or other sites and creates content that makes it easier for the readers to understand. It gives a clear idea of the overall context and why everyone is focusing on that specific Tweet.

The principle employed here is that the content will earn the attention it deserves based on its value. By concentrating your content creation efforts on one piece rather than on a series of low-quality articles, you’ll get the links, the traffic and the metrics you are hoping for.

Social media and SEO have always been important parts of the marketing strategy that works for many companies. The difference is that this new version of it takes social media out of its role as an SEO supporter and turns it into the main character.

Keep in mind that each social platform, from Facebook to LinkedIn, has two elements, much like search engines:

Search bars

The algorithm to build your feed.

Finding the right keywords isn’t much different from finding the right #hashtags. So you can use SEO tactics within your social media tools to get the best results.

This strategy is also about reshaping the content you already have (article, ebook, courses) into platform-specific content. This will make it more engaging and better at attracting the attention of the user.

It’s also the right way of using a social platform in your marketing. Imagine taking out burning questions from your latest ebook and creating awesome polls on Twitter. This is a better approach to get your audience to read your material as compared to just posting random messages with a cover image.

It is often said that being smart means learning from your own mistakes, but being wise is about learning from the mistakes of others. That’s just one of the reasons why this is a marketing strategy that works.

We all wish we knew our competition’s secrets for success. Sometimes we can see the results clear as day but sometimes we might believe some of their employed strategies have no explanation.

The good news is that we now have the means to gain a clearer understanding of something being worth trying or not based on the results our competition has achieved using the same strategy.

And we’re not just talking about vanity metrics here but actual results. There are numerous tools that can give us a quick preview of how their data actually looks like.

One good practice is to find out what are your competitors’ most shared pieces on social media. You can do that with ContentLook.

After compiling a short list, narrow it down to the ones that are the best from an ROI perspective. What pages have great conversion elements? What is their intended purpose? Is it to encourage a purchase or get an email subscription?

On these pages, try to trace back the steps they took to get their success. You can ask yourself:

What keywords did they target?

What was their main channel of promotion?

How influencers offered their support to the campaign?

What words or phrases did they use in their messaging?

All these will not only help you understand their success model so that you can replicate it but also help you have a better grasp of what the audience is searching for and how they phrase it.

That way, you’ll know the customer’s own language for describing the problem they face and the solution they are trying to find.

Try to collect data from direct competitors but also different brands targeting the same demographic as your business, and even companies within the same industry from different locations.

Marketing has become more complex with the evolution of technology. Nowadays, people have lots of choices. What’s more, information is easily accessible, helping them find the products they really need.

In order to stay relevant, you need your brand to innovate disruptively. Meaning that it needs to come up with changes that will make your clients’ lives better because they influence the whole product not just add a new feature.

This translates into marketing your business and brand by using your unique value proposition. This is the key element which differentiates you from every other company selling similar products.

But in order to do this right, you need to be able to properly answer a few questions:

Who is your specific audience? Gone are the days when you could just presume your product is a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. You need to narrow down what segment of buyers needs your product the most and capitalize on it before turning your attention to other buyer segments.

What is your segment of buyers interested in? What are their values? Knowing this information will help you tailor the messages you send out in your marketing. It will also help you make more informed decisions, as you’ll have a better understanding of your future customer behavior.

Who is part of your competition framework? Answering this question means identifying the companies that already answer the needs of your targeted segment. Consider both direct and indirect competitors.

Once you’ve done the research, you’ll be able to craft a value proposition that not only makes sense for your brand but is also convincing for your niche.

Choosing the Marketing Strategy that Works for You

Finding great unconventional ideas in marketing is an excellent first step, but it’s just that: the first step. Applying and testing these strategies to find the best Marketing Strategy for your own brand is how you take it further.

Whatever strategy from this list you end up choosing so as to spruce up your marketing efforts, don’t forget that:

Content is still an important part of your marketing, it’s just about adapting it to the right user case.

Focus on your audience and let them help you take the right decision. If you know where to find them, you’ll know what platforms to focus on. If you know what they need, you know what content to create.

Data about your clients and site traffic is always powerful and useful in a marketing strategy that works.